cannabisnews.com: George Harrison Dies at 58 










  George Harrison Dies at 58 

Posted by FoM on November 30, 2001 at 07:17:36 PT
By Adam Bernstein, Washington Post Staff Writer 
Source: Washington Post 

George Harrison, 58, the Beatles' low-key lead guitarist who was a defining influence in pop-rock guitar and strove for fuller recognition within the band for his pensive compositions about drugs, love, mysticism and peace, died Thursday of cancer.Harrison was the youngest of the Beatles, a Liverpool-born quartet that swelled to world attention in the early 1960s with such optimistic pop tunes as "Love Me Do" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand." 
They later evolved into a wildly imaginative and technically disciplined band that experimented with instruments and themes, from the string-backed elegy "Eleanor Rigby" to the Hippie anthem "All You Need is Love."By the time the Beatles broke up in 1970, they were reportedly the most popular and wealthiest band on the planet. Among their legacies was leading the first wave in the invasion of British rock bands in America and helping advance the youthful anti-authoritarianism of the 1960s. Harrison died at the Los Angeles home of longtime friend Gavin De Becker. "He died with one thought in mind -- love one another," De Becker said. Harrison's wife, Olivia Harrison, and son Dhani, 24, were with him when he died.Harrison's family issued a statement saying: "He left this world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of death, and at peace, surrounded by family and friends. He often said, 'Everything else can wait but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another.' "Harrison, the youngest and most reserved of the quartet that included John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, exhibited enormous skill on the 12-string guitar. He later introduced the group to Far Eastern religious philosophies and instruments that became an integral part of the Beatles' mystique and also were adapted by other leading rockers.Often called "the Quiet Beatle" for his humble public demeanor, and one critic called him the "unnoticed mover" of the band. His songs were among the gentlest and meditative of the Beatles' output, including "Within You, Without You," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something."Frank Sinatra said "Something," a ballad about a woman's allure, was among the greatest love songs ever written. Others to record the song included Ray Charles, James Brown and Smokey Robinson.Like Lennon, Harrison brought an overt political dimension to the music with such pieces as "Piggies" and the hard-driving "Taxman," which savaged Britain's high tax rate with such pungent lines as "Now my advice for those who die/Declare the pennies on your eyes."In a bizarre brush with infamy, serial killer Charles Manson was said to have read apocalyptic visions into the Beatles' self-titled 1968 album, which contained "Piggies" and Lennon and McCartney's "Helter Skelter." Manson's followers scrawled in blood "Helter Skelter" and "kill the pigs" on the wall of one of their victim's homes, the latter an allusion to Harrison's song.Despite Harrison's growing interest in songwriting, he rarely got more than a tune or two on each album. The releases were dominated by the dynamic personalities and compositions of Lennon, the band's resident social observer, and McCartney, whose love for dance-hall melodies were prevalent in the recordings. Harrison said he felt musically stifled and was grateful for his freedom when the Beatles disbanded.Only 27 at the time of the split, Harrison went on to a successful solo career but never matched the critical and popular attention afforded his first major release, "All Things Must Pass" (1970). That triple-album combining spiritual beliefs, lyrical loveliness and jam session skills had an array of tunes that immediately thrust him out of the Beatles shadow, including "My Sweet Lord" and "Isn't it a Pity."His last solo album to receive high praise was "Cloud Nine" (1987), which blended pop songs with the chart-topping tune "Got My Mind Set On You."Much to Harrison's dismay "Beatlemania" persisted, and promoters offered lavish sums trying to reunite the band – until Lennon was murdered in 1980 by a crazed fan. Then there were Beatles re-releases, a multi-media anthology and a television miniseries about their lives.Never one to embrace the public spotlight, Harrison increasingly attached to his residence Friar Park, an abandoned convent in Henley-on-Thames. He seemed content to manicure the large property, perfecting his garden for aesthetic reasons but also seeing in that hobby a keen metaphor for his own lifelong search for meditative peace."I'm really quite simple," he wrote in his 1980 autobiography "I, Me, Mine." "I don't want to be in the business full-time, because I'm a gardener. I plant flowers and watch them grow. I don't want to go out to clubs and partying. I stay at home and watch the river flow."He dedicated the book to "gardeners everywhere."George Harold Harrison was born in the port city of Liverpool to Harold, a bus conductor, and Louise Harrison. The youngest of four children, he was a quiet and independent child who rebelled against the forced discipline of school and found refuge in his father's extensive record collection.He was particularly entranced by the American country-rock sounds of Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins and Chet Atkins, and the earliest Beatles records showcased forceful country-blues licks he adopted from those musicians.Harrison said the recording that fully awoke his musical passion was guitarist Lonnie Donegan's 1956 recording of "Rock Island Line," regarded as a classic of the goodtime skiffle sound combining blues and American folk influences.Later, he grew to admire the Spanish classical guitarist Andres Segovia.Such eclectic influences – shared by all the Beatles – helped distinguish it from most other rock bands, and Harrison remained among the most stalwart proponents of musical experimentation."I don't understand people who say, 'I only like rock and roll,' or 'I only like the blues' or whatever," he said. "I would say that even the crap music that we hated – that late '40s, early '50s American Schmaltz records like 'The Railroad Runs Through the Middle of the House' . . . even that has had some kind of influence on us whether we like it or not."In 1956, Harrison met McCartney, who took the same bus to school and was similarly smitten with American pop. McCartney introduced Harrison to his friend Lennon, who led a skiffle band called the Quarry Men. Harrison dropped out of school and became a full-time band member at 17.The group's name would undergo a few more permutations, including Johnny and the Moondogs, the Silver Beatles and, in 1960, the Beatles. The name was partly a tribute to Holly's band, the Crickets, but with Lennon suggesting the pun of "Beat" to emphasize rhythm.Band personnel was shifting, too, with bass guitarist Stuart Sutcliffe a member from 1959 until getting married in 1961 (he died from a brain hemorrhage the next year) and drummer Pete Best aboard from 1960 until being replaced by the more experienced Starr (his real name was Richard Starkey) in 1962. Their first long-term booking was in the red-light district of Hamburg, Germany. But it was back in Liverpool that their career received its biggest thrust, when in 1961 they were taken under the management of Brian Epstein, a music store owner convinced the rakishly handsome quartet had appeal.Under Epstein, the Beatles received their first prestigious record contract, with Parlophone Records, part of the important EMI Group. A combination of guidance by Epstein and EMI executive George Martin would create a national furor known as "Beatlemania." Some newspapers noted the band's notoriety was less about their upbeat and unpretentious music than their odd looks. They had unkempt, mop-top hair-dos distinctive from the greased back and crew-cut fashions of the time.Epstein oversaw the marketing of the group's name on everything from gum to jackets and helped them get time on CBS's "Ed Sullivan Show" in 1964, which was watched by an estimated 73 million people.Around this time Harrison began writing songs but as a lark, according to his autobiography. Even in later years Harrison said he never put much advance thought into his songwriting, preferring the power of the moment to be his guide. He wrote, "Mainly the object has been to get something out of my system, as opposed to 'being a songwriter.' ""Here Comes the Sun" was written on a beautiful spring day in 1969 when Mr. Harrison left the Beatles business office feeling frustrated by nitty-gritty accounting details.He walked over to his friend Eric Clapton's house and strolled around the garden with a guitar in hand. The result was one of the most buoyantly joyful of his songs: "Little darling, it's been a long, cold, lonely winter/Little darling it feels like years since it's been here/Here comes the sun. Here comes the sun/And I say . . . It's alright."Harrison's most radical contribution to the Beatles was the sitar, a long-necked, lute-like instrument with a broader musical range than the guitar. His first recorded Beatles effort on sitar was on Lennon's "Norwegian Wood" (1965), but he also wrote an entire composition to showcase the sitar, "Love You To" (1966) on the "Revolver" album.The man responsible for his enthusiasm was Ravi Shankar, a respected Indian musician who spurred Harrison's interest in Far Eastern philosophy. Harrison and his bandmates began taking LSD and became disciples of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a bearded spiritualist whose message of "inner peace" and Transcendental Meditation resonated most with Harrison.Harrison, who in his youth turned away from his Catholic upbringing, once said the appeal of Eastern religion was the emphasis on direct experience. His song "Within You, Without You" (1967) on the album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" reflected his growing respect for Indian culture."When you've seen beyond yourself – /Then you may find, peace of mind, is/Waiting there – /And the time will come when you see/We're all one, and life flows on within/You and without you."Harrison, impatient to receive larger personal recognition for his songs, did his first solo albums, "Wonderwall Music" (1968) and "Electronic Sound" (1969).The Beatles broke up in 1970, with each artist having gradually drifted into separate projects. "It's too confining," Harrison said about working so long with one band. "The good thing about being on one's own is all the time being able to use other musicians. There's an advantage to that because a single new musician can change your music."He toured England with Clapton and also did "All Things Must Pass."The big hit from the album was "My Sweet Lord," which blended gospel, pop and hare krishna chants. The song sold nearly 1 million copies as a single but brought him years of litigation when the publisher of the Chiffons 1962 hit "He's So Fine" sued Harrison for plagiarizing that pop tune. Harrison denied the charges but was fined $587,000 for having "unconsciously plagiarized" the song.This and other legal entanglements spurred him to write "This Song" and "Sue Me, Sue You Blues."Harrison's extensive philanthropic career began during this time. In 1971, he was credited with organizing the first large-scale benefit concert put on by rock musicians. His George Harrison and Friends Concert for Bangladesh, which featured Bob Dylan, Clapton and noted Indian musicians, raised millions of dollars for child refugees in the newly independent nation.The album of that concert won a Grammy Award as album of the year, but an Internal Revenue Service dispute left the proceeds in doubt for about a decade and the bulk of the money never got to those who needed it right away.Besides the million-selling "Living in the Material World" (1973), Harrison's work in the mid-1970s was regarded by some critics as his least-successful period. Such albums included "Dark Horse" (1974), "Extra Texture" (1975) and "33 1/3" (1976).In 1981, his album "Somewhere in England" contained an acclaimed tribute song Harrison wrote about Lennon called "All Those Years Ago," which bespoke of feeling "cold and sad" and said "we're living in a bad time."In 1988, he formed the Traveling Wilburys with Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra and briefly Roy Orbison, who died that year.Harrison was involved in film production from the late 1970s until his HandMade Films incurred millions in debt by the mid-1990s. Among the films he produced was the Monty Python romp "Life of Brian" (1979), which piqued members of the religious establishment for its mocking view of Christianity, and "Time Bandits" (1981), a fantasy-adventure directed by Terry Gilliam of the Python troupe.Harrison's health had been declining for years, starting with radiation treatment for throat cancer in 1998. The following year he was stabbed in the chest by a Beatles-crazed stalker who broke into his home. He also underwent surgery at the Mayo Clinic to remove a cancerous growth from a lung in May 2001, and this summer he was reportedly treated at a Swiss cancer clinic for a brain tumor.In 1988, the Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.His marriage to model Patricia Anne "Patti" Boyd ended in divorce. She left him in 1974 for Clapton.He married his then-secretary Olivia Arras in 1978. They had a son, Dhani.Source: Washington Post (DC)Author: Adam Bernstein, Washington Post Staff WriterPublished: November 30, 2001Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company Contact: letterstoed washpost.comWebsite: http://www.washingtonpost.com

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Comment #13 posted by Blue on December 29, 2001 at 18:17:08 PT:
George
The best we can do is remember him and love him for what he did and continues to do.
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Comment #12 posted by FoM on November 30, 2001 at 20:48:03 PT
Just Want To Say!
I have been watching tributes to George Harrison on different channels tonight and they are really good. They are showing what many of us loved and still love about that time of our life. A very sad day for me and many but also a time of appreciation for the one Beatle I never really paid close attention too but loved his songs. Rest in Peace George and I know he will.
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Comment #11 posted by FoM on November 30, 2001 at 18:44:00 PT
Pictures & Short Audio Clip
George Harrison Pictures - Guardian Unlimited (UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gallery/image/0,8543,-10104294073,00.html
Here Comes The Sun - Washington Post -Partial Audio of Song
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/apdaily/113001-3s.htm
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Comment #10 posted by john wayne on November 30, 2001 at 18:34:11 PT
He's so fine.
Do lang do lang do lang!
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Comment #9 posted by FoM on November 30, 2001 at 16:56:01 PT
My Sweet Lord - Midi File
http://www.groovynet.com/groovycards/midi/my_sweet_lord.mid
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Comment #8 posted by i420 on November 30, 2001 at 16:48:22 PT
While the world gently weeps...
John and George looking down from heaven across the strawberryfields...together....forever.
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Comment #7 posted by Zero_G on November 30, 2001 at 16:21:23 PT:
All Things Must Pass
Sunrise doesn't last all morning
A cloudburst doesn't last all day
Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning
It's not always going to be this greyAll things must pass
All things must pass awaySunset doesn't last all evening
A mind can blow those clouds away
After all this, my love is up and must be leaving
It's not always going to be this greyAll things must pass
All things must pass away
All things must pass
None of life's strings can last
So, I must be on my way
And face another dayNow the darkness only stays the night-time
In the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
It's not always going to be this greyAll things must pass
All things must pass away
All things must pass
All things must pass away----------------------------------------------------------Thanks George, we'll miss you.
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Comment #6 posted by Nuevo Mexican on November 30, 2001 at 12:01:24 PT
A role model for millions..Good bye George!
Thanks for the inspiration. My life has been profoundly influenced by your spiritual leanings, gifted musicianship and the light you always provided me when things were soooo dark. My interest in reincarnation, meditation, astrology, eastern religions, outspoken political views. You name it! What my parents couldn't provide me with, you and your pals did! My first band was inspired by your life. We called ourselves 'Seltaeb' Gee, I wonder if anyone can figure out that one! 90 percent of our tunes were Beatles covers and we even played 'A Day in the Life' and side 2 of Abbey Road. At the age of thirty, I finally had the confidence to call myself a lead guitarist. I took a while to leave the drums behind, but because of you George, I felt I had no choice but to follow my heart. As an Astrologer, I am deeply grateful to your help in my finding a spiritual path that helped me survive the music industy and living in Americas darkest hours (currently as well). How nice that your passing over has bumped Bush and the killing spree gang off of the top news. I think it is why you chose this time to pass over. To remind the baby boomers of there true calling. To bring love and peace back to the planet Earth and restore divinity to mankind. Thank you again for your perfect timing. The full moon is Sagittarius/Gemini is going to change the world view and your death is a demaration point in time. Probably etched on the walls of the great pyramid too. YOu are my guru and greatest teacher (you too, John, Paul and Ringo!). Thanks for all the great times and providing us earthlings with a signal: Now is the time! Be here Now! This moment is all that exists and there is NO time like now! Be Peace and let Go!
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Comment #5 posted by DdC on November 30, 2001 at 10:45:22 PT
R.I.P. George
All You Need Is Love Love, Love, Love.
Love, Love, Love.
Love, Love, Love.There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It's easy.Nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It's easy.All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.Nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.All you need is love (Paul: All together, now!)
All you need is love. (Everybody!)
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need (love is all you need).Yee-hai!
Oh yeah!
She loves you, yeah yeah yeah.
She loves you, yeah yeah yeah.
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Comment #4 posted by lookinside on November 30, 2001 at 10:35:03 PT:
sorry to see him go...
hope he's around the next time i am...he made my life richer...
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Comment #3 posted by freedom fighter on November 30, 2001 at 10:11:29 PT
While my guitar gently weeps
and Here comes the Sun.Peace and Love one another.ff
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on November 30, 2001 at 09:07:11 PT

Rest in Peace
Here comes the sun and something in the way she moves are two favorite songs. It is sad to lose someone who contributed so much to many people's lives. He has left a wonderful legacy. It's not important how long we live but what we do with the time we are alloted.
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Comment #1 posted by Sandino on November 30, 2001 at 09:00:23 PT:

"Something"
In the sprit of the oneness within us all: Rest In Peace-George
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